Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Up until
recently, I’d pretty much convinced myself that I was going to be okay with just one kid. I cringed when I imagined how hard it’d be to take care of a
newborn and a toddler at the same time. I cringed when I imagined how I’d go
back to having hardly any time to myself, even less so than the first time
around, and how I’d have to put all my teaching and writing projects back on
hold. My husband was pretty much in the same boat.

With one, we
could gain back our freedom to travel sooner—whether on weekend trips with just
the two of us, or family trips that involved more distant locales (even China,
I fantacized, for several months… we could rent out our house, take up in some
quaint town (or tolerable city), immerse the whole family in Chinese).

Then there was
also the question of money and space. With just one child, we would not be
pressed to add on to our one bedroom cabin as quickly; we would not be forced
to take out a loan before we felt like it was a smart financial decision. Hell,
if other factors outweighed a desire for more space, we could even put off
remodeling indefinitely. It’s been working out just fine the last couple months
with our bed in the living room. Plenty of families all over the world wouldn’t
blink an eye at raising a family in 850 square feet.

It wasn’t that
I’d made up my mind or anything; I knew that there was a distinct possibility
that I could feel totally differently in a year. But when I’d see moms with a
baby and toddler and feel a wash of relief that I wasn’t them as opposed to
envy, I thought that was a pretty good indicator that I was happy with what we
have. Cedar is an awesome kid. But he wasn’t an easy baby with all his food sensitivities
and sleeping challenges. He’s bright, active, and will keep delighting and
challenging us for years to come. He’ll have plenty of playmates; I don’t think
he’ll be lonely. And meanwhile, Matthew and I continue to reclaim vestiges of
our former adult life back.

One of the major
elements that we’ve recently started to reclaim is sleep. Cedar is finally
sleeping through the night, pretty much every night, in his own bed. That
doesn’t mean he always gets enough sleep, seeing that he wakes up around 5 a.m.
But we no longer have to spend half our night listening for his waking whines,
then rushing in to put him back down before he fully wakes. He no longer
depends on nursing to fall asleep, and he knows he won’t get any milk from me now
until 5 a.m. (which I’d like to try and change to even later; that’s the next goal).

In addition to
all this, he just recently started going to sleep without anyone staying in the
room with him until he drifts off. This feels huge! We do our usual stories, I
leave, then him and Matthew say night-night to various animals, objects, and
people, and then they turn on the noise machine, say a final night-night, and
Matthew walks out and closes the door. Brilliant. This whole shift happened
quite effortlessly one night after Matthew had enough of Cedar squirming about,
climbing on top of him, and keeping himself up by distraction. Matthew decided
to say goodnight and leave that night—and Cedar let him without a cry of
protest. So that was it. Matthew then did the same thing the next few nights,
staying in the room for an even shorter amount of time, and Cedar hasn’t
protested at all. The most he’s done is get up and crack the door open,
listening, then shut it and go back to lie down. I wish I could see what he
looks like as he lies there going to sleep on his own and know how long it
takes him, mostly to bask in the pleasure of my little guy getting to be so
independent and taking so many changes in stride. But I don’t need to see him
to know how good it feels to have an entire evening now where me and my husband
can both relax, off duty for hours, by ourselves.

So needless to
say we’re pretty happy about all this, and it’s probably no coincidence that now
that we’ve FINALLY gotten over this poor sleeping hump, I’m lo and behold a bit
more open to the idea of having another. It’s totally ironic, yes, that the
minute I start sleeping better I’d begin considering being thrown back into
total sleep deprivation and chaos. And on top of this, I’m thinking about
weaning soon—almost looking forward to it as much as I’m dreading it—and I
don’t exactly want to go straight from weaning to nursing again. I’m banking on
having at least a good few months, if not more like a year, to remember what it
feels like to not be producing milk as a primary occupation.

Here’s the
thing. If I wasn’t 37 and a half years old, I wouldn’t be in a hurry. I’d say,
let’s wait until Cedar is at least four or five, out of the toddler stage,
before we even go there. Let’s give ourselves a few years off from this early
intensive stage of parenting. Let’s get our finances together and remodel
first, and let’s not kid ourselves about how long that process might take in
itself. Let me also get my teaching life that much more established, not to
mention self-publish that dusty manuscript of memoirs that I’ve been saying I’m
going to publish for so long. Let me achieve some major goals that make me feel
good and satisfied as a writer, before I dive back into the intense beauty and
torture that is mothering a newborn. In other words: let’s take our time and
think about it.

But the
reality is, I don’t have a ton of time. After you hit 35, it becomes
significantly harder to get pregnant each year that passes—the curve sharpens
dramatically. I know people over 40 who are trying to get pregnant now, and who
are mourning their belated realization of just how much difference a year makes
at this stage. I know that if I were to decide that I did indeed want another
one, I should just bite the bullet and do it NOW, or in the next year at least,
because wouldn’t that suck to finally decide you wanted one and then to not be
able to get pregnant?

Other people
my age seem to know this too, because there’s been an explosion of births in my
world this spring. I know of seven or eight women in my son’s preschool co-op
class alone who just gave birth to their second or are due in the coming
months. Then there are my friends on Facebook; the three babies born recently
on my block; two of my oldest, dearest friends; and, finally, my sister who
gave birth just last Friday.

Seeing people
get pregnant and hold their new amazing babies doesn’t have anything to do with
my new (old, revitalized) line of thought, does it? Nah…. Of course having lots
of pregnant women and babies around me is tugging at my tender heart strings
that holds this process up as one of the most amazing gifts in life of all; of
course it is. But I also want to make sure that I’m not just caving to some
kind of socially accepted norm and unspoken peer pressure—the kind that carves
into our psyche from the time we are young that families are supposed to
consist of two parents and two or three kids; and that it’s the most natural
wonderful thing in the world to want more than one.

I told my
husband the other day, the same day we went to meet my sister’s new baby, that I
wanted to talk to him about the possibility of having another. He immediately
got defensive and antagonistic, forcing me to play devil’s advocate and act as
if I indeed knew I wanted another one, when what I really wanted to do was just
explore and hash out the idea verbally, see how it sounded saying it aloud,
return to the part of me that had always imagined I’d like to have two, a pair
of playmates, a pair to grow old with, share holidays with, share affections
with, preferably a daughter and a son, the so-called “perfect” family.

I also told my
husband the story of some friends of ours, a couple who was trying to decide if
they wanted to have another. After much soul-searching they finally decided
that no, they did not, they were fine, they were done. And then the minute they
decided this and made it real, they realized that they did indeed still want
another. It’s that element of regret at play. Wanting what you could have had,
but didn’t choose.

The thing is,
how many parents ever regret having a child, whether that child is number one
or number five? It seems like once you have a child, once they are real and
breathing and in your life, there are few who would ever, on a deep soul level,
regret having that child. The thought would be unspeakable, for that baby was here
and thus meant to be. It might have made your life insufferably hard for many
years, but in the end, it was worth it right? You wouldn’t have had it any
other way? Or is it simply such an unspeakable taboo that we never hear from
the parents who do?

That’s how it
seems to work. Once they are here, you can’t imagine them never having been
here. But what if you wanted a child, but never had one? Or never had the
second one? It seems like the possibility to regret is much greater. I am
almost 40, but I still have many years ahead of me to nurture students and to write
and publish books. I am almost 40, but I don’t
have many years ahead to have more children. This, my dear husband, is why I’m
now starting to talk to you about this. This, because it does feel like now or never time. This, because even though we are
both still on the fence, we love each other deeply, and if we do want this, we
can make it happen. This because it will always be scary to contemplate
something so huge as to choose to bring another life into the world and your
life. But it will not always be possible
to do so.

This is what I
don’t want: I don’t want to passively choose to not have another one (by
letting time slip away) because of money or space issues. Those are the things
that we can figure out, make work. And nor do I want to passively choose to
have one (how could you, really?) because of a fear that I would regret it if
not. If we have another one, I want it to be because we are so fucking excited
by the possibility of being able to experience the miraculous process of coming
to know a new being so intimately related to the both of us, and yet so
ultimately unknown and mystical, and to know all the joy and riches that such a
darling spirit could bring into our lives. That leap of faith.

Yes, there’s
always the chance that she/he could have a birth defect, or be a terribly
difficult bad seed. (I have yet to see, Dear
Kevin, but it’s on our queue). But chances are, they wouldn’t. And even if
so, then they’d be meant to be ours
to love and grow with anyway. I know of no other “path” than parenthood that
rocks your world so tremendously, and that if you choose to accept and let it,
will transform you in brilliant ways in the making. Despite all the sleep
deprivation, time alone deprivation, and undeniable challenge and hardship.

What I want is to take a poll of all
the new moms of two out there and to ask you: tell me the truth, how hard is it? How much sleep do you get, how much
time do you get to yourself and with your husband? How much harder is it to
balance the whole work-family continuum with two than one? Do you ever get
pangs of regret? I want to hear from the new parents, not the
seasoned ones who have made it past the hardest years and are now coasting in
the land of “kids are in school during the day” and “couldn’t imagine it any
other way”. I want to hear from the newbies because if we do choose to go this
route, I want to know what I’m in for. I don’t want to fool myself into
thinking I might be that much wiser at hiring help or carving out more time for
myself this time around that I’d avoid all the depressing, suffocating pitfalls
of new-immersion-motherhood.

I’ve already
heard sentiments from moms of two young ones about how it now feels like a “break”
when you “just” have the baby to watch, and not both kids. My selective memory
is remembering the days of long stroller walks where you could have long
continuous conversations with other new moms and get exercise at the same time while watching the baby, and
thinking, that wasn’t so bad… But then simultaneously wondering if this kind of
activity would be the closest thing to a regular “break” that I’d get in a long
time. And, of course, my problem is that I don’t just want your typical mom “breaks”
to go work out, go to the spa, or to read on the couch—I want those too, yes,
on occasion, but mostly I want time to write and do my work (writing and teaching)-- work that doesn’t pay much if any
money.

So my
conundrum has always been how to afford a babysitter to do my work that doesn’t
pay for a sitter, and still have time left over for yoga or walks or necessary
mental health breaks. In short, if I decide to have another, am I deluding
myself if I think that I’ll somehow manage to have time for all of these? I can
handle a sacrificial period without for maybe six months or so. But after that,
I want back to it. I want to write, I want to teach, I want to work. This
calling is like another child of mine, one I must take seriously. I don’t want
to return to that deep motherhood cocoon quite so wholeheartedly as I did the
first time. I want that elusive work-life balance.

My husband
(and my selective memory) would do well to keep reminding me about how
miserable I’ve been at times during the last couple years, and how it is only
just in the last six months or so that I’ve had the energy, resolve, and time
to teach again, in addition to everything else. Nobody needs to remind me of
the joy of motherhood though. That reminder is breathing and singing and screaming
with me every day.

Anyway. I know
that after hashing it all out, by myself and with my husband, I know that in
the end it won’t be a rational decision. It will either be a clear (but
slightly fearful) yes or a clear (but
slightly wistful) no resonating from within
my heart.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Yesterday, my dear friend gave birth to her baby. When we heard the news that she'd gone into labor we lit a candle and, when it went out the next day, we lit another one which we'd keep lit until well after the baby was born. Each time I saw the flickering flame, as I went about my daily tasks or got up to go pee in the dark, I was suddenly reminded again of what was going on for her, at this very moment, imagining her in the throes of the wildest, most intense ride of her life.

Today, I’m feeling immensely grateful. Grateful for the birth of her baby. Grateful that my
husband is taking the week off, and letting me have a stretch of three mornings
to go write. And
grateful that on Friday we will take off for our first camping trip of the
year, to Mt. Rainier, and that the weather is
actually forecast to be sunny!

Yesterday, my online birth story workshop also ended, and next
Monday, my “letter writing” workshop at the Hugo House will begin. In between
the two, I have this wonderful week ahead of me that, despite the usual
childcare duties, chores, and sleep deprivation, still feels like a vacation. A good part of this sense of pleasure I think comes from having completed
the birth story workshop—a goal that started out as an idea, that I dreamed of
long ago, then planned and advertised for, made a reality, dove into, and
accomplished on my own. My daily work of motherhood on the other hand is
also deeply satisfying and challenging, but it isn’t a job that one ever “finishes”
and is thus allowed that sense of satisfaction that comes from something that
has a clear beginning and end.

The birth
story workshop was deeply satisfying in so many ways. I love the process of
helping other people find the time to write, delve into their memories, let go
of expectations, find their voices, confront their sorrows and joys, and go
deep into their interior landscape. And I especially loved doing this within
the context of writing about the births of our children—such a profound
experience that so many of us women go through, and yet that the world at large
so rarely gets the opportunity to hear about in detail.

Prior to
being pregnant and preparing to give birth myself, I don’t think I’d ever heard
a birth story told in person. Perhaps I remember a crazy video of a birth shown
in a high school science class (or am I imagining this?), and perhaps I’d read some
brief account here or there (right?), but to actually hear what it felt like,
what it looks like, how many hours or days it could span, and all the variables
of what could happen? Nope. Not a clue. How about you?

Why is it
that we don’t collectively hear or know more about childbirth and labor? Well,
for one thing, once the baby comes, parents are usually so overwhelmed and
deeply immersed in the intense care of a newborn and the desperate hope to
catch up on their sleep, that there isn’t exactly time to sit down and tell
everybody about the crazy ride they have just been on. And yet, no matter what
happens in a labor, no matter if it lasts four hours or four days, it is
nothing less than profound. Think about it. Birth.
All of our metaphors for talking about the journey that a person, a country, or
a culture go through can be framed through the lens of birth and death. All of
us are born—again and again and again—as we go through different cycles in our
lives, different lessons, journeys, travels, jobs, tragedies, accomplishments.
These are the stories we live for, the stories we look towards for all of our
hope and inspiration. And all of this
movement, all of these lessons and cycles and metaphors stem from the actual
physical process of a mother giving birth.

When you
strip life to its core, we are left with the image of a newborn baby, naked and
screaming and thrust into this new life through her mother’s birth canal.
Covered with bodily fluids, connected the darkness of the womb through the lingering
pulse to the umbilical cord, so dependent on the care of others to survive, and
yet nevertheless out here for the first time in the world, in the light, taking
in your first breaths on your own.

It’s crazy
really to think about birth. What happens, how it happens. The countdown of
days, then hours, as the mother’s uterus starts to contract, as the baby
signals to mother it’s readiness to be born. It’s crazy, really. Crazy
beautiful and intense. There is nothing else like it, this journey that mothers
prepare for, this need for her to let go into the experience—to let go of fear,
expectations, inhibitions, life as you know it. To know that everything you’ve
just done to prepare for the birth is both enough, and also could never
possibly be enough to prepare you for the unknown journey of this labor—what it
will feel like, how long it will last, how you will respond, how you will know
yourself—or not know yourself, not even identify with a sense of “self”—in the
act of giving birth.

My dear, dear friend of many years, perhaps many lifetimes,
just gave birth yesterday. I still have not heard the details, but I thought of
her throughout the day and night each time I looked up and saw the candle we’d
lit: burning, a constant reminder that while we were going through the daily acts
of our lives, she was in the throes of sweating, breathing, and pushing—of what
will probably be the single most intense act of her life. Unless you count her
own birth—or her own death. Neither of which most of us are able to remember and
put into words.

Giving birth to our babies, though? We do have the capability to translate and preserve these stories. For
ourselves, for our loved ones. And as much as giving birth is an “out of mind”
experience, as much as we seem to forget so much of it in its aftermath, there
is still so much of the experience that we can
convey-- for ourselves, and for others. To help us touch upon the mystery that
is life, the mysteries embodied within nature and our internal cycles, the
mysteries embodied within this act of a new life coming into the world.

Who are
you, who will you be, little one? Why is it you,
chosen, for this couple, and not another? Why is it you, only you, that is meant to be the one to radically alter your mother’s
lives? How is it that birth happens all around us, every day, and yet there is
only this one small window, when the memory of labor is still fresh and the
sense of your unfathomable newness to this world still so breathtaking. Before long, at least on the surface, all the human
rituals that we attach to babies seem to take precedence, or at least this is
what we see and talk about: the cute outfits and photos posted on Facebook,
then the endless conversations about feeding, burping, and sleep.

When you reach a certain age—mid-thirties for our
generation—all kinds of people in your immediate world (tidily represented by Facebook) who had held off until
now start to pop out babies. First, you hear
the announcement, usually when they are about 3+ months (with a lesser risk of
miscarriage), or else with the first cute belly shots, when they really start
to show.

Then,
depending on the person, you are reminded of their pregnancy through weekly
updates on their changing sleep, eating, or energy patterns. We get updates
about finding out the sex, about going
on a “babymoon”, pictures of the new nursery, and then finally those last posts
when entering the final stretch of days left at the job, the Braxton Hicks
contractions, and a mounting sense of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement.

Then:
silence. Then: the first trickle of news, the baby is here! The name, the
length, the weight. Then: the first photos. A giant wave of congratulations.
The biggest news that one could possibly share. The greatest achievement to
reflexively ‘like’. What’s not to like? A new being is here. No one has died in
the process. Another fleeting reminder of the miracle of life. Something we’ve
all gone through: the birth canal—or at least the transition from darkness and
womb to air and light.

Then:
silence. Mom and Dad (or Mom and Mom, or Mom and whomever she has) are
exhausted. Learning. Overwhelmed. Busy. Swept up in a vortex of sleepless
nights, breastfeeding, diapering and swaddling. On the sharpest learning curve
of their lives. If they are lucky, they are brought meals, cared for by family,
ushered into a cocoon of safety and soft voices, all for the love of the baby.
If they are lucky, they are able to sleep a bit, to rest, to cry, to stare with
wide open gaping mouths of sputtering love. If they are lucky, they have people
around them to help them, to care for them as they are newborns themselves. If
they are lucky, these same people make sure to give them their precious alone
time, time to nap together as a new family of three, time to stare with mouths
open agape, time to cry.

No matter
the birthing experience, it is a proper response to cry. No matter vaginal or
cesarean, no matter long or short, no matter tearing or no tearing, no matter
boy or girl, healthy or not healthy—no matter the experience, there is no more
appropriate response to the entrance of a new life into the world than to cry.

Oh, dear mother,
dear father, dear heartbeat, dear blood line, dear family and friends and all
of my relations: you have helped give
birth to a baby.

My dearest friend has just given birth. And soon, in a
matter of days, my sister will give birth too. Just recently she asked if I could
be available as a back-up support person, in case her husband needs help, or in
case she wants me there at her labor. My heart leapt. Yes, of course! I will be
there, if I can be. I had figured she was okay with just her husband being there,
and also she’d probably assumed it’d be hard for me to commit to being there
because of my responsibility for my son. I went ahead and scheduled a camping
trip for the few days leading up to her due date, figuring it’d better to
schedule it before the due date than after (as it is more likely that she’ll be
late than early for first-time births). But now, I’m hoping more than ever that
the baby won’t come early and that I’ll be able to be there for my sister and
her husband. And, although I don’t assume this, that I might even get to
witness the birth if she wants me there. This possibility feels akin to being
offered the opportunity to go on a spiritual retreat of unknown proportions,
for which you must commit to dropping everything in a minute, quite possibly
emerging ragged and exhausted, but from which you can be absolutely sure you
will emerge profoundly moved and changed.

Even if I only get to rush in with flowers and tears after
the drama has unfolded behind closed doors, I am incredibly excited for my
sister to give birth to her first baby, Cedar’s cousin, my niece.

I feel poised on the cusp of so much new life right now—with
one baby just arrived, and another on its way. Also, with one workshop just
completed, another on its way. And in between, this stretch of days left open
to enjoy and revel in life, summer, nature, family, writing, home, my own
incredible good fortune.

LinkWithin

Sign Up for my Seasonal Newsletter! (Writing and Workshop Updates a few times a year.)

Find Me on Facebook

Search This Blog

WELCOME:

My name is Anne Liu Kellor, and I am a writer, teacher, and mother living in Seattle. My memoir about my years spent migrating between China, Tibet, and America, Searching for the Heart Radical, explores themes of language, love, and belonging, and is now in search of a publisher. I facilitate writing workshops in the Northwest, and work one-on-one with folks as a mentor and editor. I hope you enjoy my blog.